Organs can now be grown!

[Drasca]

lethally flawed genotypes - then they reproduce. [right][snapback]106374[/snapback][/right]

Fuzzy wuzzy oxymoron. If they're reproducing successfully, its not so lethal after all.

We are indeed becomming weaker as a species

Pure speculation. The same kind of statement came from social darwinism. The only sort of reckless genetic defects come from thinning the gene pool (incestual lines of kings...). If you look too closely at a tapestry, and start pulling at threads from fear of imperfection, the tapestry unravels and becomes undone.

When changes come, and they do come, success is always by the most adaptable, from the most diverse. Static models stagnate and die.

[Occhidiangela]

Very Gibsonesque, Occhi.
Well, humanity's an evolutionary dead end so long as we keep the "flaws" around (and are bound to planetary life on earth)- but do we need to evolve? What do we gain by cutting and pasting what we think is desirable? What do we risk losing?

Genius is as much a fluke of genetics as schizophrenia. Do we quell one and encourage the other without understanding either? Do we really want to hand Permanent Solutions to a medical establishment that already has half the country popping pills for disorders they don't understand?
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If you haven't read it, check out the research the University of Utah did in a population with remarkable incidence of genius level intelligence, the Askanazi Jews. There were links to a number of congenital physical ailments that tracked with the tendency to extraordinary intellect. If the assumptions are reasonably sound, which is a matter of some discussion, the case study makes a good argument for the synergy of nature and nurture combinee. Even with its shortcomings, the study is worth a read in its exposition of genetic detective work, and the rarity of such genetic clusters in human societies. We do get around.

Occhi

[Guest]

Fuzzy wuzzy oxymoron. If they're reproducing successfully, its not so lethal after all.

We are indeed becomming weaker as a species

Pure speculation. The same kind of statement came from social darwinism. The only sort of reckless genetic defects come from thinning the gene pool (incestual lines of kings...). If you look too closely at a tapestry, and start pulling at threads from fear of imperfection, the tapestry unravels and becomes undone.

When changes come, and they do come, success is always by the most adaptable, from the most diverse. Static models stagnate and die.
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Wrong.

A lethal genotype is one that would kill an organism. If you for instance sugically repair the heart or remove the cancer growth it was still a lethal genotype by definition.

We are evolving technology/society at the expsense of of human biology.

[eppie]

No.


I have been making this point on this forum for years BTW. Also drop the inference to racism, loser its a 2 bit insulting trick to discourage people from disagreeing with you.
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I think your right ghostiger, but this thing is too often used out of racist believes. (I'm not saying you do, but I want to state that I find it without sense to talk about it in the way you do)

If you would just look biologically a lot of the most succesful people in the world (in terms of power and wealth), are very weak, and would "not survive with the fittest".

All those fat managers and politicians etc. etc.

If there really would be a new kind of evolution which would favour the succesful, we would maybe go towards a society of people that are just very good in reaching succes in the modern kapitalist societies.

So the statement of "because of empathy we save people with "genetic problems" is not correct. Most of the succesful people (just like everybody else) are also genetically "challenged" so we keep people with "bad genes" alive, because we have bad genes ourselves and because we can. And on the other site of the world, also many people with "perfect genes" die every day, just because there are wars and there is no food.

[Guest]

OK, genetic diversity is a "hedging of bets" at the species level.  I am with you.

While you make some very good points, we should not forget the synergistic effect of nature AND nurture.  Developing an advanced brain means nothing if it isn't used.  Adapting sound survival strategies can overcome any number of purely genetic obstacles. Put a different way, some of the environmental obstacles are within us.  As another example of non optimal evolutionary development, the appendix, to go with your sickle cell example.

Occhi
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Actually hes even wrong there. Evolution is not a proccess to force variety. But variety is an important element of evolution.

In its simplest terms evolution is just the change in population genotypes over time through various mechanisms.

Frequently we also call changes that make a species more fit evolution. This is also considered a correct defintion. Because this is the natural result of the species biology and its envirement.

What modern technology is doing is selectively modifying the envirment for indivuals at the exspense of the species fitness for the common evirement.

[Guest]

I think your right ghostiger, but this thing is too often used out of racist believes. (I'm not saying you do, but I want to state that I find it without sense to talk about it in the way you do)

If you would just look biologically a lot of the most succesful people in the world (in terms of power and wealth), are very weak, and would "not survive with the fittest".

All those fat managers and politicians etc. etc.

If there really would be a new kind of evolution which would favour the succesful, we would maybe go towards a society of people that are just very good in reaching succes in the modern kapitalist societies.

So the statement of "because of empathy we save people with "genetic problems" is not correct. Most of the succesful people (just like everybody else) are also genetically "challenged" so we keep people with "bad genes" alive, because we have bad genes ourselves and because we can. And on the other site of the world, also many people with "perfect genes" die every day, just because there are wars and there is no food.
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You are mixing 2 isues and get a nonsense deduction.

Consider this points.

1 We have an uneven implentation of technology around the world, mostly do to random events and cultural norms of the last 2000 years.
The medical effects of this is an example of technology driving evolution rather than fitness.

2 The places in the world with the least technology are the those with the highest reproduction. In this sense technology/society is actually decreasing reproduction.

3 In any given society the poor and less successful reproduce at the highest rate on average

4 In given areas with homogenous technology the less biologically fit are surviving more than they used to, regarless of their position in society. The wealthy may surivive at the highest rate, but that has always been the case - in ancient times it was because they had enough food.





Technoloogy is making the the human species biologically weaker and it is not increaeing mental capacity as a trade off.

[Drasca]

Frequently we also call changes that make a species more fit evolution. This is also considered a correct definition
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If you do not consider ability to manipulate environment an extension of evolution, then overwhelming success might disagree with you.

If you for instance sugically repair the heart or remove the cancer growth it was still a lethal genotype by definition.

Survival is the only definition that matters, and survival is defined the greatest variety to adapt to the broadest of adversity. Once you start purposefully letting people die you could save, you start shrinking the pool. Who knows? Maybe the genes for cancer will be pivotal to our survival in the future. More realistically, there could've been other traits that we'd lose.

So, we might end up cyborgs, but that is still survival. Although at this point, many of us may alread qualify, having been either sewn up like frankensteins with plastics, bones replaced with metals and silicone implanted in esthetically pleasing areas.

[Drasca]

Consider this points.

(snip)

The wealthy may surivive at the highest rate, but that has always been the case - in ancient times it was because they had enough food.[right][snapback]106386[/snapback][/right]

More red herrings out of an egoist attitude. The poor and wealthy are attributed to a class, not a family line--you're arguing a repeat of Social Darwinism, which has been frequently disproven. The matter of who holds material wealth changes, and is not relevant to survival as a species.

Oh yes, there are hordes of unwashed villagers, and the survival is built on the backs of them.

Poor become rich, rich become poor, neither status necessarily contributes any more to survival of the species.

Tell me, do you need to win a nobel prize to help the human species live? Be a doctor? Superintendent of a school district? I believe nurses and teachers as a whole are generally materially compensated poorly, yet they have a signifigant impact on us.

Methinks the qualifier for what makes success is too narrow and too ill thought out, especially when success against the myriad requires diversity.

[Occhidiangela]

If you do not consider ability to manipulate environment an extension of evolution, then overwhelming success might disagree with you.
Survival is the only definition that matters, and survival is defined the greatest variety to adapt to the broadest of adversity. Once you start purposefully letting people die you could save, you start shrinking the pool. Who knows? Maybe the genes for cancer will be pivotal to our survival in the future. More realistically, there could've been other traits that we'd lose.

So, we might end up cyborgs, but that is still survival. Although at this point, many of us may alread qualify, having been either sewn up like frankensteins with plastics, bones replaced with metals and silicone implanted in esthetically pleasing areas.
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Breeding cows, horses and dogs for particular traits has had some successes, and some drawbacks. Hip displasia in retrievers is one such drawback.

I have read varying comments on how narrowing the gene pool influences resistance to disease. Since microbes evolve and adapt as well, the resistance trait is up against a variable threat. Since our observations have been done within the context of centuries, and the gene pool has been established, via mixing, over millenia, I wonder at how much we actually know, and what we are still guessing at. I'll bet the over on the guesswork.

Occhi

[Guest]

Survival is the only definition that matters, and survival is defined the greatest variety to adapt to the broadest of adversity.
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I disagree.


Also that is not the definition of survial. Survivial has a rather simple definition - not dying.
You dont really seem to understand the defintion of defintion.

[Guest]

That was a moronic response. If you had carefully added up what I said you would see that I was pointing out that his idea on regions of the world were completely off. In fact other than my first line(which Im sure you agree with, everything I said was factual.)

Your retort has nothing to do with my point.

Particulary stupid of you was when you said I was argueing social dawinism. I actually pointed out the the worlds more technological societies are reproducing less so from a social Darwinists perspective I guess they would be "losing".



I restate everything simple for your little brain.

-Ethnicity is a non issue.
-Increased technlogy lowers the birth rate of a given socierty.
-Increase technology keeps deliterious genes in a given population with without changing any other gene densities as a trade off.

[Maitre]

-Ethnicity is a non issue.
-Increased technlogy lowers the birth rate of a given socierty.
-Increase technology keeps deliterious genes in a given population with without changing any other gene densities as a trade off.
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Okay, so you could have said that a little more politely, but we'll move on. This is not a direct reply to Ghostiger, but I didn't know where else to jump back in.

My point originally probably got lost in how I was trying to say it. I'll concede that remaking one's environment could be considered a successful adaptation by a species (it works for beavers right?), however, the total domination of the environment (with the exception of natural disasters) perpetrated by the human race serves to remove evolutionary pressures. It has been my understanding that the mechanism "natural selection" is based on comparing developed variation against environmental pressure, those that prosper in the face of pressure are "selected" to reproduce, strengthening their contribution to the the genetic line of the species. In a setting where environmental pressure is removed, many genotypes, both adept and inept, go untested and are propogated to following generations.

Take eyesight for an example. Through much of the world, corrective lenses are available for those with poor eyesight. In many parts of the world, visual acuity is not tested as it was thousands of years ago. Variation in acuity (both positive and negative) increases over generations because the trait is untested. My statement that the species is weaker because of this may have been to strong: my conclusion is that the possibility of survival for weaker individuals is increased because environmental pressure is substantially decreased.

To Occhi, yes, I stopped going to church a few years ago, and don't plan to go back. However, I am planning to see the Rabbi in the next few weeks when Passover rolls around.

[Chesspiece_face]

Also drop the inference to racism, loser its a 2 bit insulting trick to discourage people from disagreeing with you.
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oh? if that's a fact it sure hasn't stopped anybody. I welcome the discussion.

To clarify, my statements regarding racism, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism were meant only as a warning on how the labling of genes as BAD or GOOD can easily be used by someone to justify or rationalize their own beliefs and how misinformation could then be propogated onto the public.

I'll give what i feel is a very pertinent example: The Bell Curve written by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray and published in 1996 has had a large impact on the way people look at education and even how education and research is funded. The overall point of the book was that Inteligence is a genetically derived attribute and that the class structure and social stratification in america is based on these inherant attributes in people.

Now where's the problem? Well first any good scientist or researcher will tell you any result you get from an experiment will be derived from the operatinal definitions you set prior to collecting the data etc. In the case of The Bell Curve a highly impactful OD would be "what is intelligence?" The authors choose to define intelligence by a purely american, middle-upper class, predominantly white definition. Obviously if you were to hold other people from different cultures/countries to this standard they would come out as extremely unintelligent.

secondly, despite what the authors attempt to portray there is really no concrete way in which we can accurately define intelligence. there is also no research to suggest that genetics plays any direct role in ones intelligence. (this is where nature and nurture come into play.)

So what we have here is a kind of circular logic. The authors believed that different races genetics attributed to their intellectual prowess. they let their bias effect their research in how they defined their operational definitions. and then used the same research to justify and rationalize the belief they had all along.

[Chesspiece_face]

That was a moronic response. If you had carefully added up what I said you would see that I was pointing out that his idea on regions of the world were completely off. In fact other than my first line(which Im sure you agree with, everything I said was factual.)...

...Particulary stupid of you was when you said I was argueing social dawinism.
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And you say that i use topics to discourage people from disagreeing with me. the amount of times in which a discussion involving you devolves into thoughtless namecalling is absurd.

[Guest]

And you say that i use topics to discourage people from disagreeing with me.  the amount of times in which a discussion involving you devolves into thoughtless namecalling is absurd.
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No that particular response to me deserved a flame. It took only a superficial veiw at what I had said then pointly disagreed with ideas I didnt not present at all.

Unlike other posts in this thread here that I disagreed with it deserved a flame. Its not her ideas that riled me but rather her inability to read what she responded to.

[Guest]

I think we are beyond that.

The issue now is that technology is "progressing" instead of human biology "progressing".

This happens 2 ways.

Human biology is actually regressing because normally the majority of random mutations that effect the phenotype are selected against. Technology is greatly reducing all selective forces on biology thus the random negative mutaions are not being eliminated.

And negative reccessive traits that would be selected against over time in a population are not being selcted against as strongly.
Biological evolutionary mechanisms help bring about adaptations in a population, but currently these mechanisms are running without a driver so they bring about random change in a population which is bad.

[Rinnhart]

Hey, hey, hey, can't we all just chill out, get a frosty, and enjoy a 99¢ vat-grown chicken nugget meal?

[Occhidiangela]

In the case of The Bell Curve a highly impactful OD would be "what is intelligence?"  The authors choose to define intelligence by a purely american, middle-upper class, predominantly white definition.  Obviously if you were to hold other people from different cultures/countries to this standard they would come out as extremely unintelligent.

Thank you for falling into the racial stereotype trap yourself.

Define white. ;) Better yet, quit while you are ahead on that score. ;)

secondly, despite what the authors attempt to portray there is really no concrete way in which we can accurately define intelligence.  there is also no research to suggest that genetics plays any direct role in ones intelligence.  (this is where nature and nurture come into play.)

The difficulty in definition is not the best reason to raise an eyebrow on that one, for my money. I share your misgivings about their findings.

Intelligence is not like height: we can't measure it as simply. Certain cognative functions and knowledge retention and display can indeed be measured, it is done frequently. The suitability of the test is of course an area of immense concenrn: what is it we actually measure with any test?

Digression: I was involved a few years ago with the card carrying smart guys who are rewriting the ASTB, a test battery that is being, once again, redesigned and improved upon to better screen candidates for Flight Training. The process of validation will take five years, once the final form is approved. Tests themselves are sensitive to inducing errors in one's conclusions, and in some cases they are predictors to but "a standard deviation." But I digress.

What is extremely hard to quantify and isolate, and to find an audit trail for, is potential intelligence. Nurture and nature combine, it is not a nurture versus nature problem.

Example: The capacity to learn multiple languages varies in potential AND opportunity. Some folks are more naturally apt, but if not exposed at an early age, may never have that potential tapped at all, or have it tapped only partially. Does that make them more or less intelligent? How did we ever measure the raw potential for language? Can we even do that? Or, can we do it "within this error band." The problem comes to policy, which has to be explained to those who don't bother to take the time to understand just what those error bands are, or mean, and the non objective meanings associated with test scores and labels.

What appears to be evident is that many people appear to have a reasoning ceiling. The cause and effect of that, however, isn't answered by The Bell Curve's study, for my money. I don't think it's answered anywhere, successfully.

The authors believed that different races genetics attributed to their intellectual prowess.  they let their bias effect their research in how they defined their operational definitions.  and then used the same research to justify and rationalize the belief they had all along.

I'll suggest that they isolated variables without effectively accounting for how the multiple variables interact with one another. That undermined their case. Intelligence determination, versus educational level, is one of those high order polynomials that one could try to solve for at the expense of one's sanity. :blink:

Oh, yeah, the agenda fairly leapt off of the pages.

My feeling was that the process used was "we see an outcome, lets find the data that shows how we think that outcome arrived" rather than "how did this outcome arrive?"

Now, let's talk about second hand smoke fear mongering, shall we? ;)

Better yet, let's quit while we are ahead.

Occhi

[Chesspiece_face]

Better yet, let's quit while we are ahead.

Occhi
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Awww. but its been sooooo long since i've taken part in running a thread into the ground.

[Drasca]

Breeding cows, horses and dogs for particular traits has had some successes

Have you noticed how their faces tend to be humanized? There's a term for this, but such pets were bred to look 'human' for our pleasure. If you take a look at wild dogs and our household pets, you'll see the huge difference.

I wonder at how much we actually know, and what we are still guessing at.  I'll bet the over on the guesswork.
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I am fairly certain any conclusions made would be made out of speculation, or stated more simply:

I know that we do not know

From a deductionist standpoint, that is the beginning of true knowledge.

A quick google search outlines Darwinism and shows the all important matter of:

Note that change over a thousand generations of any species appears as "sudden" or "abrupt" change in the fossil record, because a thousand generations is such an infinitesimally small fraction of Earth's history

As such, other details are pushed aside. We have no definitive proof we are evolving or not evolving, for good or bad. Even assuming Darwinism is not applicable, we do not have the tools to assess the matter on a large scale, genetic technology is still at its infancy. I'm grateful for any understanding at all we're gleaning, but there's simply not enough information nor tools to judge with.

Hey, hey, hey, can't we all just chill out, get a frosty, and enjoy a 99¢ vat-grown chicken nugget meal?

That brings me back to the Asimov's Caves of Steel "Yeast for dinner again mom?" text. Also, there were rumours that KFC officially changed their name to specifically avoid having the word "Chicken" in their name because they engineered meat on a mass-production level that wasn't necessarily chicken. Unfortunately for that conspiracy, Chicken farms are far cheaper, and such technology didn't seem possible... until now.

So where's my instant hamburger in a beaker? Much better than fish at fora.